I jumped into Usenet as an experiment and, once it was setup, it was ok. Although it is definitely not simple to get started and it seems you are constantly having to pay for stuff, even to access the trackers, which don’t even have all the content!

I decided I didn’t download enough and what I wanted was too hard to find, so I went back to Torrents. Way simpler for my occasional use.

Thanks. I did check Trash guides before posting but it doesn’t cover installation, much less Linux user naming and groups, unless I missed it.

That makes sense. Thank you so much. That is a question that has caused me issues for a long time. Now I understand it.

Thanks, great reply.

I’m not willing to give up just yet. So I’ll try a block account from a different provider and see how it fares.

I’m just trying the scene out, but so far I’m put off by having to pay for both indexers and providers, and now I need multiple of both to get what I thought was basic content (a film about a boy wizard).

Maybe it’s a different problem causing my downloads to not even start, but the help page suggests DMCA as likely cause.

This is the way

Lol, No and No.

Why would you pay for a ‘beefier’ internet connection AND pay for Usenet and then pay even more for a NAS.
I pay for Usenet so precisely so I don’t need those things.

Don’t know why everyone is shitting on you. You raise a good point. When did piracy become something you pay for?

A way to fairly pay the original content creator.

If I really enjoy a movie, series or music, I often actually want to send the actual creator some money to reward their creativity. May be just a dollar, may be ten. But I can’t.

This is true.

Go and buy a car from a manufacturer who doesn’t insist on subscriptions… whilst you still can!

If you never enable any data services on your SIM (GSM only for calls) and never connect to WiFi. You’re not leaking anymore data than an old fashioned phone.

However, the fact that you are asking these questions does suggest you are probably being unhealthily paranoid. (Reading these replies, it seems you are in good company on this forum.)

I’m going to assume you are not engaging in high level cyber activities that would require you to adopt this level or paranoia. If you were, you wouldn’t be asking basic questions.

Instead, it sounds like you have developed an irrational fear of what tech companies can realistically do with your data and what level of harm they may wish to cause you.

Typically, they can log your search and browser data to determine if, for example, you like pizza. Then they may show you an advert for pizza or highlight the nearest Dominos on Google maps. But… they can only do that if you share that information with them in the first place by using your new smart phone (with none of the privacy settings enabled) to search for pizza and then using Google maps. Nobody is forcing you to do that. But is it really that bad even if you do?

Google are not going to clone you, or assassinate you or somehow work out you are not paying taxes or are engaging in illegal activity unless you use your phone to do it. And even then, they don’t go round grassing people up to the government for the fun of it. They just want you to click on adverts and, once you are aware of how they operate, it’s relatively easy to avoid them whilst still getting great value from a pretty incredible piece of modern technology.

Now, if you are genuinely worried about government targeting (I don’t know what country you live in) an encrypted messaging App will be significantly more secure than an unencrypted old GSM phone that is quite easy to intercept and relies on the integrity of your MNO provider.

My advice, stop worrying. You already have a cautious mindset so you won’t get tricked by these companies, but you could also be enjoying many of the benefits of being able to access all of humanities collective information from your pocket.

Super useful, thanks. Actually made a lot of things click in my head about how Linux works.

When did /home get deprecated? Is /usr/local the replacement?

Sorry for the n00b question (I’m not a noob, but I have been off Linux for a few years), figured the answer may be useful to other users too